Britain’s National Health Service has proposed cutting back on operations including breast reductions and anti-snoring treatments as part of plans to save money and reduce “unnecessary or risky procedures.” National medical director Stephen Powis said the health agency could save an estimated £200 million ($264 million) a year by tightening the criteria for treatments where the risks could outweigh the benefits. The list of 17 treatments under consideration to be halted or reduced includes tonsil removals and procedures for carpal tunnel, hemorrhoids and varicose veins. Authorities will discuss the proposals next week. The announcement came as demonstrators marched Saturday in...

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. If you like the surgery you’re about to receive, you can get the surgery you’re about to receive. Yes, that’s the latest cost-cutting measure that’s about to hit Obamacare recipients. In California, according to the American Spectator, they’re going to start cutting funds to hospitals that perform too many surgeries. How many is too many, of course, is whatever the nearest bureaucrat says that it is. “Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act,...

The first patient I saw during my clinical rotations as a medical student was dying from chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Today, with treatment, the 5-year survival rate for CML is about 90%. But when I was a student, CML was incurable. It was an early and poignant reminder of the limitations of medicine that I have never forgotten. We didn’t understand cancer like we do now, nor did we have the tools to treat it, which meant there was agonizingly little we could do. With the national hospice and palliative care movements only beginning, our discussions with this man and...

LIVERPOOL, England, April 20, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A nurse who worked at Alder Hey children’s hospital until this month has published on social media what he says is a scan of Alfie Evans’ brain along with the message that the baby “deserves” to die. “Up, Alfie’s brain. Down, same age healthy boy,” the nurse wrote about the brain scans of two children that he posted to Facebook this week. “Sad reality, but IT’S THE REALITY. He deserves to go, he has had enough,” states the message from the nurse who described himself online as a “PICU Staff Nurse at Alder...

....Algorithmic tools like the one Arkansas instituted in 2016 are everywhere from health care to law enforcement, altering lives in ways the people affected can usually only glimpse, if they know they’re being used at all. Even if the details of the algorithms are accessible, which isn’t always the case, they’re often beyond the understanding even of the people using them, raising questions about what transparency means in an automated age, and concerns about people’s ability to contest decisions made by machines. {snip} ...Arkansas has said the previous, human-based system was ripe for favoritism and arbitrary decisions. “We knew there...

House Speaker Paul Ryan, saying entitlement reform is essential to limiting budget deficits, criticized Sen. John McCain on Tuesday for voting last year against the repeal of Obamacare. “The house has passed these bills, but John McCain said no instead of yes,” Ryan said during an exclusive interview with FOX Business’ Maria Baritromo on “Mornings with Maria.”

The Netherlands has euthanized a 29-year-old woman who was not diagnosed with a physical disease but was suffering psychologically, an example of the growing allowances for what is being called "dignified death." The Dutch woman, Aurelia Brouwers, died by physician assisted suicide last Friday. Dutch media reports indicate that she chose death, arguing that she had a right to a "dignified death" after living with severe psychological issues since her childhood. "I think that after such a rotten life I am entitled to a dignified death," Brouwers told Dutch media outlet RTL. "[P]eople who have a serious illness get a...

Apparently assisted suicide is not enough for the death peddlers in this Pacific Northwest State. Now they are pushing legislation in the Oregon State Legislature that would allow starving mentally ill patients to death. A similar bill was defeated last year but the euthanasia promoters are back with a new one, Oregon Right to Life tells LifeNews. House Bill 4135 is scheduled for a hearing and possible work session in the House Health Care Committee at 3:00 pm on February 7th. It is believed this bill will move quickly because there are only 35 days in the 2018 regular session....

Despite what we read in the “news” media about GOP failure to repeal Obamacare, congressional Republicans and President Trump are dismembering the reviled healthcare law, limb by limb. The latest appendage lopped off was its most dangerous — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), investing unelected bureaucrats with power to “recommend” reductions in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. This would have inevitably reduced access to care for the elderly. That dangerous Obamacare provision was repealed this morning. If you have heard of IPAB, it is because Sarah Paalin dubbed it the “death panel." Her crusade against IPAB is one...

ObamaCare has caused hard-to-quantify economic damage, but some of the law’s regulations may be lethal—literally. Consider a Medicare hospital payment initiative, which a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology suggests may have contributed to an increase in deaths. Readers are likely familiar with ObamaCare’s mandate and subsidies to impel individuals to obtain health insurance. But the law also included monetary incentives and penalties aimed at inducing changes in health-care delivery and spending reductions. The government rolled out these payment models nationally without careful study, and they are having unintended side effects. A case in point...

Pope Francis on Thursday urged lawmakers to ensure that health care laws protect the “common good,” decrying the fact that in many places only the privileged can afford sophisticated medical treatments. The comments came as U.S. lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have been debating how to overhaul the nation’s health insurance laws. In a message to a medical association meeting at the Vatican, Francis expressed dismay at what he called a tendency toward growing inequality in health care. He said in wealthier countries, health care access risks being more dependent on people’s money than on their need for treatment. […] Without...

The NHS will ban patients from surgery indefinitely unless they lose weight or quit smoking, under controversial plans drawn up in Hertfordshire. The restrictions - thought to be the most extreme yet to be introduced by health services - immediately came under attack from the Royal College of Surgeons.

The sad reality is that people will often forget human history. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I think that everyone needs to read the article, The Nazi’s First Victims Were the Disabled, that was published in the New York Times on September 13. This excellent article is written by Kenny Fries, an author who recently published “In the Province of the Gods.” Fries is writing about his explanation to a young German neurologist of the truth about how the Nazi’s T4 euthanasia program killed as many as 300,000 people with disabilities. The killing techniques...

The Senate faces a September 30, 2017, deadline to use budget reconciliation to repeal Obamacare this year. In the wake of the Senate’s recent failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, Senators Lindsey Graham (R–SC) and Bill Cassidy (R–LA) have released an updated version of their bill in a renewed effort to take advantage of this expiring legislative vehicle. Like others considered this year, Graham–Cassidy falls short of fully repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a new patient-centered system, but it does include significant improvements over current law by repealing the individual and employer mandate tax penalties, providing Medicaid reform, and...

Could chatbots lend a non-judgemental ear to people making decisions about the end of their life? A virtual agent that helps people have conversations about their funeral plans, wills and spiritual matters is set to be trialled in Boston over the next two years with people who are terminally ill. People near the end of their lives sometimes don’t get the chance to have these important conversations before it’s too late, says Timothy Bickmore at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. So Bickmore and his team – which included doctors and hospital chaplains – built a tablet-based chatbot to offer spiritual...

The Government needs to invest more than €5 billion in additional beds, equipment and infrastructure as there is now clear evidence acute hospitals are “beginning to fail”, senior doctors have warned. In a submission to the Department of Health, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said the system was experiencing ever-increasing waiting lists for essential surgery while there had been a “collapse” in the elective or non-urgent output in acute hospitals. It warned key targets in relation to cancer care were also now being missed. The submission, sent last Friday, said the waiting time prior to the commencement of chemotherapy...

Sarai was 25 years old when she died of Wilson’s disease, an inherited disorder that causes liver failure. A liver transplant could have cured her, but she was uninsured and was denied an appointment at two prominent Chicago transplant hospitals, including my own. Sarai’s plight was brought to my attention when a local religious group held a hunger strike advocating transplant access for Sarai and other uninsured patients. When she died, her congregation marched seven miles, holding her photograph and lugging coffins emblazoned with her name, to launch a sit-in in front of Northwestern University Hospital. Her death certificate named...

FULL TITLE: Charlie Gard’s Parents Receive Hate Emails: You’re “Selfish Frauds” Who “Don’t Give a S— About Charlie” Connie Yates and Chris Gard just wanted to give their son, Charlie, a chance at life. For months, they have been battling for the right to take their son to the United States for an experimental treatment and only gave up earlier this week when medical experts said their no longer is any hope for Charlie. Possibly at their lowest moment yet, the British family said they are receiving hate mail criticizing them for fighting for their son, The Sun reports. One...

The slippery slope is real. Once the state gets in the business of killing off its citizens via euthanasia, the brutal logic of economics works its way through the system. In Canada, which legalized euthanasia just over a year ago, one of the most important forums for political discussion, Maclean's Magazine, published an article arguing that doctors ought to be paid a premium for killing off euthanizing terminal patients. And of course, it was all so reasonable in tone. It really is a lot of work for the doctors, you see. Most providers need to meet with their patient a couple times...

Another family in the UK is fighting to keep doctors from forcing their sick baby off of life support. From The Mirror story: Charlie Gard supporters are rallying round the family of a seriously ill little boy as his parents face a battle with medics to keep him alive. Tiny Alfie Evans in being treated at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool and suffers from a mystery condition staff are struggling to diagnose. The 14-month-old family are hoping to find pioneering treatment for their little boy abroad. Alfie has been in a coma in the hospital’s intensive care ward since...